“It’s time that we stopped denying that this crisis has come to us and start thinking of ways to address it,” writes Bethany Mandel in an opinion piece in The Forward about what she calls the “Jewish opioid epidemic.”

The evidence, she says, comes in the shocking statistics emerging from Orthodox communities about deaths from drug overdoses. But, she says, the numbers don’t tell the whole story. A number of community organizations, including Operation Survival and Amudim, work with people to counter addiction.

Rabbi Zvi Gluck is the director of an organization called Amudim that helps young people who get involved with drugs. Gluck told me that these numbers don’t even include older Jews, whose families are withholding the cause of their relative’s death from the wider community.

“We did not see this 10 years ago,” Gluck told me. “We’re seeing a huge increase of people reaching out for help, even though there is a stigma.”

More evidence, says Mandel, can be found in the fact that Narcan kits, which are used to counteract overdoses, are increasingly being made available within the community.

The strongest evidence for a Jewish opioid epidemic comes in the guise of Hatzolah ambulances now carrying Narcan, a medication that treats narcotic overdoses. And it’s not only Hatzolah ambulances — Narcan is distributed to faith leaders, and to family and friends of those addicted, not to mention to the addicts themselves.

As part of the New York City and State Opioid Overdose Awareness Program, Amudim has held events across the area, including one in Brooklyn attended by over 800 people. Present at these events are therapists discussing the clinical aspects of addiction, rabbis tackling the spiritual angle, and a representative from the medical community instructing attendees how to administer CPR and Narcan. Those present are offered a kit.

In a follow-up piece the next day, Mandel said that the response to her article had been “overwhelming,” and she quoted from numerous stories that people related to her.

As the White House urged Congress to withhold $600 million in nutrition assistance to Puerto Rico, officials responded angrily that this is only the latest in a series of President Trump’s attempts to stop the flow of federal aid to the island, El Nuevo Día reports. Political analyst Domingo Emanuelli found the Trump government's actions “barbaric,” and urged Puerto Rican Republicans to reconsider their allegiance. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz said: “I shouted against Trump’s abuses from the start while others were chummy with him. Trump is not the plantation owner and we are not his slaves.” Link to original story →

The Indigenous Peoples March being held in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 18, a day ahead of the Women's March, will bring together groups from Puerto Rico to South America and Central America, reports Remezcla, to focus attention on issues from voter suppression to human trafficking to police brutality to what is called an “environmental holocaust” by activists. “I think it’s a collective cry for help because we’re in a time of crisis that we have not seen in a very long time,” says Nathalie Farfan, an Ecuadorean Indigenous woman and event organizer. Link to original story →

After vowing to create a more inclusive school system in North Carolina, the Durham Board of Education introduced a new department of second language services to serve newly-arrived immigrants who don’t speak English as a first language, Qué Pasa Noticias reports. One of the main goals of the initiative will be to coordinate a translation and interpretation system to help families participate in their children’s education. “As our Latinx population keeps growing we keep opening our schools’ doors to those arriving from all over the world,” said Superintendent Pascal Mubenga. Link to original story →

With Sen. Kamala Harris expected to announce her decision on a presidential run, The American Bazaar asks members of the Indian-American community about the potential candidacy of the California native. While some celebrated the possibility of Harris, who is of Jamaican-Indian descent, running amid the current political atmosphere, others say the country is "still not ready for a female president and certainly not a non-white." Link to original story →